


A Locked Box

by littlerhymes



Category: Let Maps to Others - K.J. Parker
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5515004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Essecuivo, there are still some mysteries to be solved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Locked Box

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SQ (proteinscollide)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/proteinscollide/gifts).



Two months after I returned from Essecuivo, I went to Euphrosyne.

I'd always thought of Euphrosyne, if I thought of it at all, as a muddy, provincial place. Perhaps with a few pigs rooting around outside the hovels where slack-jawed peasants scratched at their bellies and armpits. I spent the whole week-long journey already hating it.

It was beautiful. 

The academy was small, just a cluster of buildings by the foot of an olive grove, but the light came in through the tall windows clear and bright. It illuminated the intent faces of the students, upturned towards the podium where Carchedonius delivered his final lecture of the semester. 

He looked different. Gone were the shabby clothes and cobbled shoes. Now he stalked up and down in fine new boots, expensive black robes swirling behind him - far finer than any he'd ever had at the Studium. Euphrosyne had treated him well. Or had it? 

I sat in the shadows at the back of the hall and listened. The Carchedonius I knew had burned a priceless artifact for the sole purpose of destroying me. He would have thrust his own hand into that same fire, would've cut out his own eyes, if it had produced the same result. He had pulsed with ambition and a repellent, ugly rage. He would've preferred to murder me than admit I was right.

Whenever I had thought of Carchedonius, I'd felt exactly the same way.

Now? He was still an excellent scholar. He was a master rhetorician, and every word he said was clever or true. But he seemed aged before his time, gaunt and grim, and in his eyes there was a terrible blankness I recognised from the last time I'd seen him. 

_Because you've won_ , he'd said, and walked away. 

Was this what it meant to be the victor?

The lecture ended. I rose to leave, disguised by the rush of students. Carchedonius was still on the podium, sorting through his papers, but when I looked over my shoulder his head was raised, his eye wandering over the crowds.

I think he saw me. I think he called my name. 

But I didn't look back.

I returned to my lodgings, ate and drank mechanically, and then lay down on the bed. I thought about the quickest way back to the Studium and the City, the papers I had yet to write, the acclaim that waited. Tomorrow, I could quietly pay my bill at the inn and simply leave. No one need know I had ever been here at all. 

I fell asleep with my boots on, and dreamed of the abandoned cities of Essecuivo.

*

The next day, I did not leave. I dressed and ate and took my leisure in the markets. Then I walked up the long road to Carchedonius' house. 

He lived high on a hill in a house with a red-tiled roof and the walls painted all white, overlooking the blue waters of the harbour. The walk was long and I was out of breath long before I reached the summit; I cursed his name with every other step.

But I kept walking.

I heard the clink of bottles before I saw them. I laid my hand on the wooden gate; it swung open with a creak. 

He was slumped over a table in the cobbled courtyard, an empty bottle rolling on the ground beside him and one just opened clutched in his hand. So this was how he spent his coin and wasted his days away from the academy.

When he looked up, bleary-eyed, his face was red with sun and drink. "You?" he said. In disbelief at first. Then shock, anger, contempt in turn all passed swiftly over his face. He swore, and wiped at his mouth with his sleeve, and spat. "So it _was_ you, yesterday. Why are you here?" His lip curled. "Come to gloat?"

I sat across from him. Even from there, I could smell the sourness of the wine on his breath. 

"No," I said. "Because of this." And I drew the little box out of my pocket and placed it on the table between us. 

It was made of stone - a perfect cube small enough to sit on one hand, yet light enough that it must be hollow inside. Each surface was intricately carved, the top adorned with a nautical scene, dense geometric patterns on the sides, and an intricate inscription on the base. 

A box. Locked, unopened, irresistible.

"This is from Essecuivo." Slowly he straightened up, his expression gone suddenly still and watchful. 

"Yes." I'd found it in one of those empty, crumbling mansions, a tree root wrapped around the remains of might have once been a wooden chest. I'd shoved it into my bag and in my feverish near-madness forgotten it until many days later, on the ship back to the City.

"A puzzle box." He gazed down at it. His hands, trembling, almost but not quite touched its sides. I thought I saw a light kindling in his eyes. There had been mentions of such boxes in Aeneas' papers, the toys of Essecuivan nobles, their creation elevated to an art form - but scant details otherwise. This would be the first one ever found.

"Yes."

" _Unopened_ ," he said. 

Carchedonius looked up at me then, and he was still too blurry from wine to be as sharp as he should be, but the realisation had arrived. Ah, and there it was, that animal gleam, that ferocious glee. This was more like him.

He started to laugh, head thrown back, shoulders shaking helplessly. "You need my help. You, the greatest living authority!"

"Yes," I said, shortly, trying to cut him off before he came hysterical. "I've been working on the inscription but as for the box itself - I've tried everything. I'm willing to offer dual credit on the paper. _If_ you can help me open it."

His laughter slowed, and he shook his head, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Co-credit? You and I? Hell has frozen over. You must be truly at wits' end. No, no." He leaned forward, cocked his head. "Tell me now, truly. What's in it for you, _really_?"

"Look," I said, standing and snatching the box away from his greedy hands. "Are you in or not?"

"Oh, I'm in, of course. When do we start?" He leaned back now, smug and pleased with himself at having got under my skin, at being the one with the power in this conversation; and in that moment it was as though the years rolled back and we were students at the Studium again. 

How I hated him. 

I sneered, trying to regain the higher ground, and tucked the box back into my robes. "Certainly not today. You're pathetic. Sober up, and I'll come back tomorrow."

I walked back down the mountain. The sound of his cackle followed.

*

The next day, Carchedonius was sober. In the days that followed, he would drink, but I did not see him drunk again. 

On that day, I think he was surprised that I came back at all. He tried not to show it, scowling as he let me into the house and waved me through to the study. 

I looked around with a frank curiosity at the book-lined walls, the view from the open window over the deep blue sea. He motioned me to sit. I took my time dusting off an armchair, while noting with raised eyebrows the untidy stacks of parchments on the worktable, and the unwashed mugs and plates shoved beneath it. By then he was almost vibrating with impatience.

"So I'll need a proper look at it," he said immediately, holding out his hand. 

With a sigh, I handed it over. He took it without so much as a thanks and we began our work. 

At first he refused to even look at my notes on the inscriptions. "I don't want to be prejudiced by your sloppy scholarship," he said, and dismissed me from the room.

I shook my head but said nothing. I went downstairs to the cellar and helped myself to his finest wine and cheese, took it to the courtyard and watched the waves roll onto the shore. I was not surprised, a few hours later, when he stomped downstairs and crossed his arms, snapping, "Fine. Show me what you have." So we returned to the study and I handed over my notes. 

Skeptically, he began to work his way through it. "Wrong, wrong, ha! _Completely_ wrong," he said, scanning through the first few lines and striking through my work with careless, contemptuous penstrokes. But then he came to the section below that had stumped him so, and he fell silent, his eyes scanning the lines rapaciously. 

I smiled smugly. I picked up a fresh piece of paper and drew the inkwell closer to my side of the table. "We'll take turns. You talk first," I said, dipping the nib into the ink, "and I'll write."

His mouth twisted. But he bent over his papers and mine, side by side, and began to speak.

*

Only once before had we worked like this. We had been young, then, and hopelessly naive. Not that we'd seen it that way at the time - we'd imagined ourselves worldly and cynical, held back by our plodding lecturers and the dullards who were our fellow students. 

A mutual contempt for the rest of the world had, at least briefly, drawn us together.

Over many feverish days and nights, Carchedonius and I wrote a monograph on some minor aspect of Vabalathus’ _Late Voyages_. It was hardly the paper that made our names - impeccably researched, yes, and elegantly put together, but otherwise unexceptional and these days rarely cited. It was notable mostly as the sole paper to date we had published together. 

I had not recalled the monograph in years. After our rivalry had curdled and thickened into something poisonous, it had seemed better to forget it. Those long hours side by side in the deep shelves of the library, from the morning until the attendants drove us out late at night. Then the time afterwards, spent in his rooms or mine, spent drinking and arguing and -

It was a long time ago, as I've said. I was young, and I was foolish. I'd thought I'd seen in him a reflected brilliance. A shared ambition, or a shared future.

It wasn't the last time I'd mistake a dark abyss for deep water.

*

The inscription was a poem, a retelling of a voyage made by a legendary sailor - presumably matching the illustration on the top of the box, showing a boat with battened sails, tossing on the waves beneath a heavy sky. 

Both of us were certain the poem was the key to opening the box. But here we came to an impasse. 

Carchedonius insisted we focus on the _content_ of the poem, to unravel the forgotten legend of the sailor, arguing that the story itself would provide the necessary guidance. I wanted to concentrate on the _form_ , certain that the structure of the poem itself held a hidden code. 

"You always want to take the easy route," he accused. "Where's the rigour in counting syllables and lines? Where's the skill in that? Not everything is about fucking numerology. Just because it worked once-"

"And _you_ always take the conventional one," I hissed. "No vision. No ambition. Show me one time, one single time, you ever had an original thought and actually-"

It went on from there as it usually did between us: downwards. He insulted my ancestry and my future offspring. I said something obscene about his mother.

I'd moved from the inn into his house some time ago, so that we could continue our research uninterrupted. Now, snarling, we retreated to opposite ends of the house. 

The stalemate continued for some days. During the daytime, we'd sullenly pass one another manuscripts and books, barely exchanging more than glances, while jealously guarding our notes from each others' sight. At night we'd sit down to dinner and wine, and argue until our throats were hoarse. 

We alternated the box between us: mine in the mornings, his in the afternoons, and overnight locked away in a chest to which we each held a key.

My theory hadn't been panning out so well, despite some promising beginnings. Even though I had begun to think that perhaps he was right, I always pretended that I was much further along then I was, just for the pleasure of needling him about his progress or lack thereof. Though I was gratified to see that _his_ studies seemed to have been equally fruitless, judging by his glares. Inevitably we'd both go to bed disgusted and furious, and begin again in the morning.

On the fourth day, during one of these tense dinners, the dam broke.

"If you're so fucking clever," he said at last, interrupting, his hand white-knuckled around his spoon, "then why haven't _you_ opened it yet?"

I took the bait. I always do. I looked at him coldly. "What if I already have? What if I've already done it and I'm simply here to see how far you've declined? I have to admit you're taking much longer to figure it out than I'd expected, from a supposed expert in -" 

Both of us remembered in that moment all he'd ever done to me. And all I'd done to him. The lengths to which we'd gone simply to prove one another wrong, to make fools of one another. The _True History of Essecuivo_ , turning to ash in Carchedonius' hand. The forgery I had made, and then founded my fortune on.

So although what I said wasn't true, it _felt_ like it could be true. It felt like something I'd have done, if only I had the chance.

He leaned over and grabbed me by the collar. "You bastard," he snarled. "You complete bastard." Then he punched me across the mouth, and I felt my lip split, tasted blood, even as he pulled me towards him and crushed his mouth to mine.

He was just as crude and demanding as he'd been at the age of nineteen. We knocked the table over, plates and bottles smashing, as he hauled me out of the kitchen and down the corridor towards his room, both of us slamming into walls and doors in our struggles. 

He ripped at my clothing and pushed me onto the bed. Then he held me down, hard enough to leave bruises ringed around my wrists, marks in my hips, and fucked me rough and fast.

Afterwards, I asked him to do it again.

*

I slept soundly that night in Carchedonius' bed. Deeper than I had in months.

In my sleep, I dreamed of Essecuivo again. Not as it is now, not the ruins that I had seen or the merciless jungle where I'd almost lost my life. 

No, I saw the city of Eano as it had been, as it had soared in my imagination and in the words of Aeneas. The wide streets and the clear river. The graceful buildings and verdant gardens. Children running hand in hand, laughing. A woman at a telescope, observing the dance of the stars. 

Beyond her, I saw a man sitting at a workbench. He was carving tablets of stone and fitting them together into a cube, small enough to hold in the palm of a hand. When five sides had been joined together, he held the box up to his mouth as though to whisper, as though to breath. Then he took up the final panel and sealed the box forever, with his words locked away inside. 

Here, in Essecuivo, I felt a peace I had never known in waking life. Here, I lay on the soft grass with my head pillowed on my folded arms, and listened to the wind rustling in the trees.

Rustling, rustling…

Then I woke up. Slowly I became aware the rustling was the sound of shuffling paper. I turned over and saw Carchedonius sitting cross-legged and naked at the end of the bed. He was holding his notes in his left hand, and looking at my notes in his right; the morning light shone through the pages and turned them the colour of gold. The box was in his lap, cradled in the crook of his knee. 

After a moment, he laid the papers aside. He picked up the box. Pushed at a panel. Pulled at another. And then _twisted_ it slightly...

I sat up at once. "What are you doing?" I said. "Show me."

He put the box down at once, and looked over his shoulder. The curve of his spine was like a question mark. "Nothing," he said. "Go back to sleep."

"Fuck you," I said, and began to pull the covers back. "Now show me."

"Fuck you?" he said. A light lit in his eye. He shoveled the papers off the bed and dumped them on the table, setting the puzzle box on top of them a little more reverently. Then he came back to the bed, a flask of oil in his hand. "Yes. Yes, I think I will."

He pulled back the sheets and rolled me onto my stomach, spreading my legs apart, and began to prepare me. I didn't stop him. I didn't want to. When he pushed inside me, I bit my lip so hard it split again; and when he began to move, our bodies fused, both the pain and pleasure was enough to make me forget almost everything.

Carchedonius bit the back of my neck as he fucked into me. "God, I hate you," I heard him say, felt him whisper into my skin. "I hate you - so fucking much - oh, god. God!"

I didn't bother saying the same in return. He already knew.

*

"Here," he said afterwards, as we cleaned ourselves up, and handed me a glass of water.

He watched me as I drank it.

*

When I finally woke up, night had fallen and I had a pounding headache from whatever he'd drugged me with. 

I already knew that Carchedonius was gone, but I still made myself check every room. 

In the bedroom, the table in the corner that had been strewn with our papers was now empty. I pulled a sheet around myself and went to the study where I found gaps in the shelves, spaces that his most valued texts had once occupied. Down in the cellar, his favourite vintages were missing too. Clearly, he didn't mean to return.

There was no note. Of course there wasn't. But on the untidy desk in the study, I found the puzzle box. 

It was open - unlocked and utterly empty.

Whatever the contents had been, I'd have to find out like everyone else did: when Carchedonius published.

As I washed and dressed, I began to think. He would be a full day ahead of me and if he was lucky he might have found passage out of town already with some merchant's caravan. If all went well, if he hired horses and pushed them to their limits, he could be back at the City within five days. On top of which, he had not only his own notes, but mine as well. With this head start, he could be publishing within _weeks_.

But there was still time. I could still catch him. And I remembered everything - everything I'd written and every note of his that I'd glimpsed, every word he'd ever said to me and I to him. This wasn't over yet between us. Maybe it never would be.

So I gathered my books and my clothes, and I shoved the puzzle box into my satchel. I began to run.


End file.
